I spent a few days in a rinzai zen buddhist monastery in upstate New York about 3 weeks ago. I was also initially skeptical, and in a lot of pain. Doing the retreat with other newbies, and talking about the experience with the monks during the informal meetings really helped. I still feel the effects of it - my crazy schedules at work and tight deadlines just don't seem to bother me anymore. It's wearing off a bit now, but I still feel much more focused, peaceful and "together". I highly recommend it. - I only went for 3 days though, perhaps I'll consider a 7-day retreat someday.
It's a different world that the one we grew up in. My son showed no interest in understanding the CLI or programming, but he loved scratch:
http://scratch.mit.edu/
I think he was trying to get us to focus on not being called consumers first. Personally, I agree, it's an assumption that puts too much power in corporate hands.
I agree with you as well, though, that it would require quite a large change for us to stop being consumers.
I think it's basically that prior to this finding, the general though was that humans wiped out the neandertals by being better hunters etc. but it now looks more like humans may have absorbed them into the gene pool.
I think of the iPad as a kind of dumb terminal. An end-user device with limited uses. I don't think it will bring an end to other devices. The primary reason being that you have to create apps on something. Also, I see this as something confined to the Apple universe - while it is a bright universe, and sometimes blinds us to the other Microsoft/Linux etc. universes, it's neither the largest, nor the only area for us developers to work and play in.
It's all about money - if they start making more money on ipad-type devices, and less on osx-based devices, they'll start making more ipad-type devices. Follow that line of logic and you'd end up in the more restrictive world of the ipad-type devices. But I did say if.
Only with the "western" diet. You'll see much fewer cases of appendicitis amongst those who don't eat the overly-rich western diet. So in my opinion, this is cultural, not genetic.
Why does it always have to be low-paying? I was hired at a start-up and was paid about 15% higher than any other job I'd seen with my experience and skill-set. The increases were good and the stress wasn't unreasonable. We went from a 5-man team to a 80-person team until the company was sold to one of the biggest companies in the world (after about 5 years). My boss (who'd started the start-up retired a multi-millionaire an 45). I never got rich on it, but none of us employed there were ever paid badly, and he even made sure that we got very good retention bonuses during the buy-out. Perhaps my experience was unusual, but I wonder if more start-ups respected their workers enough to put a higher value on them if their companies wouldn't do better. There were none of us in that company that wouldn't have done anything (legal that is) that our boss asked of us, because he treated us with respect.
I think the point the OP was making was that both corporations and governments are made up of people. I agree with this; a corporation and a government is not a physical entity, and can therefore not be evil. However, people can act evil in the name of that entity. Personally, I think that as soon as we try to brand a group of people, we lose the argument.
I was in a similar situation; while I can't blame it all on my job, but it was the complacency that got me. I ended up separated from my wife and seeing my kids only a few days a week. When you feel like that do something about it. But speak to your family, prepare them for a while where they will have to live financially reduced and then make a change. Change is the first order of the universe, resistance to it will bite you in the end; embrace it and ride the wave instead.
I think this is a problem with perspective. Linux on the desktop is not a homogeneous collection controlled by a single entity. It is a collection of individual pieces. Software vendors have little incentive to make their software work 100% with those individual pieces on the Linux desktop, unlike they do on platforms where they sell other software and services. You get what you pay for, on the Linux desktop, your payment will be in time and effort to get the (usually substandard) free offerings from these software vendors to work properly.
It is something that managers love, and admins hate. It is an over-engineered mess that doesn't do what you'd expect it to do, but does a lot of what you don't need it to do. After supporting it for two years, I was happy to drop it for several other solutions that combined did what Sharepoint is supposed to do properly. I know, this was a non-answer.
Although there should always be room to compromise, I've always thought that our reach should always exceed our grasp; otherwise we'll never produce anything of quality. The article sounds to me like a simple attempt to justify apathy.
My understanding is
Introspection is the analysis of ones own thoughts.
Meditation is simply being still and seeing things as they really are, understanding that thoughts are just thoughts, just as the floor is just the floor.